VII

The Low Productivity of Labour
in Small-Scale Production and Excessive Work

The significance of the data on the use of machinery in
agriculture is usually underestimated in economic literature. Firstly, the
capitalist character of the use of machinery is quite often ignored
(always, in the case of bourgeois economists); the economists make no
investigation of this problem, they do not know how to raise it or
do not even want to do so. Secondly, the use of machinery is
considered in isolation and not as a criterion of the different
types of farm, different methods of cultivation and different
economic conditions of farming.

If, for example, as a general rule we find an incomparably greater use
of machinery in large-scale compared with small-scale production, and a
huge concentration of machines in the capitalist farms, which sometimes
even have almost e monopoly of up-to-date implements, this is an indication
of the difference in care for the land among farms of different
types. Among the machines registered by the German census are such machines
as steam ploughs, seed-drills and potato-planting machines. The fact that
they are mainly used in capitalist agriculture means that in this case
care for the land is better, the technique of cultivation higher
and the productivity of labour greater.
Bensing,[2] the author of a well-known monograph on agricultural
machinery, basing himself on the data of specialists concerning the effect
of using various machines, has calculated that, even without changing the
system of cultivation, the use of machines by itself raises the net return
from farming many times over. These calculations have not been
refuted by anyone and basically they cannot be refuted.

The small-scale producer who has no opportunity of using up-to-date
implements is forced to lag behind in care for the land, and it is
only individuals or a few dozen out of hundreds and thousands who can try
to “overtake” the big farmer by applying more labour to the land while
retaining the old tools, and by greater “assiduousness” and a longer
working day. The, statistics of the use of machinery indicate
therefore the existence of excessive labour in small-scale
production,
a fact which is always stressed by Marxists. No statistics can take direct
account of this fact, but if the statistical data are regarded in the light
of their economic significance, it becomes clear which
types of farming are bound to develop, cannot fail to
develop, in modern society when machines are used, and when their use is
impossible.

The Hungarian statistics provide an illustration of what has been
said. Like the German census of 1907 (and of 1882 and 1895), like the
Danish statistics on the use of machines in 1907, and like the French
enquiry in 1909, the Hungarian census of 1895, which for the first time
collected precise data for the whole country, shows the superiority of
capitalist agriculture and the increased percentage of farms with machines
as the size of the farms increases. From this angle there is nothing new
here but only a confirmation of the German data. The special feature of the
Hungarian statistics, however, is that information was collected not only
on the few up-to-date implements and machines, but on the entire,
or almost the entire, farm inventory, on the number of the simplest and
most essential implements, ploughs, harrows, carts, etc.

Thanks to these exceptionally detailed data it becomes possible to
establish accurately the, as it were, symptomatic significance,
characteristic of the whole system of farming, of the information on the
use of some agricultural machines and technological “rarities” (such as
steam ploughs). Let us take the Hungarian statistical
data[1]
on the use of ploughs other than steam ploughs (of which in 1895 there were
altogether 179 in the whole of Hungary, including 120 in 3,977 largest
farms).

The following are data of the total number of ploughs and of
the number of the simplest, most primitive and least
strongly built of all the implements of this kind (the simplest comprise
single-share ploughs with a wooden pole; the others are: the same but with
an iron pole, then two- and three-share ploughs, cultivators, ridging
ploughs, and ploughs for deep ploughing).

Groups of farms

Number of farms (total)

Number of ploughs (total)

Including the simplest

Dwarf (less than 5 yokes)

1,459,893

227,241

196,852

{ 5-10 yokes

569,534

335,885

290,958

{ 10-20 ”

467,038

398,365

329,416

{ 20-50 ”

235,784

283,285

215,380

{ 50-100 ”

38,862

72,970

49,312

Total small

1,311,218

1,090,505

885,066

Medium (100-1,000 yokes)

20,787

125,157

55,347

Large (over 1,000 yokes)

3,977

149,750

51,565

Total . . . .

2,795,885

1,592,653

1,188,830

Without mentioning the dwarf farms, we see that in the small peasant
farms (5-10 yokes, i.e., 2.8–5.7 hectares) 233,000 out of 569,000 do not
own any ploughs at all, and of the middle peasant farms 69,000 out of
467,000 are without ploughs. Only the higher groups, i.e., the big peasant
and capitalist farms, all have ploughs, and it is only in the farms of over
100 yokes (there are only 25,000 such farms==O.9 per cent of the total
number!) that the more elaborate implements predominate. In the
peasant farms the simplest implements, those least strongly built and worst
in performance, predominate (and the smaller the farm the more marked is
this predominance).

Leaving out of account the dwarf farms, which constitute the majority
(52 per cent) of all the farms but which occupy an insignificant fraction
of the total area (7 per cent), we reach the following conclusion:

Over one million small- and middle-peasant farms (5-20 yokes) are
inadequately provided with even the simplest implements for
tilling the soil,

A quarter of a million big peasant farms (20-100 yokes) are tolerably
equipped with implements of the simplest kind. And only 25,000 capitalist
farms (but possessing, it is true, 55 per cent of the entire area of land)
are fully equipped with up-to-date implements.

The Hungarian statistics, on the other hand, calculate how many yokes
of arable land there are to one agricultural implement and obtain figures
such as the following (we quote only the data for ploughs, harrows and
carts, while pointing out that the picture of their distribution among the
farms is completely analogous to that we saw in regard to
ploughs).

In farms

Yokes of arable land

to one plough

to one harrow

to one cart

dwarf . . . . . . . .

7

8

7

small . . . . . . . .

12

13

15

medium . . . . . .

27

45

40

large . . . . . . . .

28

81

53

This means that the proletarian and peasant farms, which are quite
unsatisfactorily equipped with all agricultural implements,
have an excessively large number of them in relation to the whole
amount of the arable land of their farms. A beggarly equipment of
implements and an unbearable costliness of maintaining them—such is the
lot of small-scale production under capitalism. In exactly the same way the
statistics relating to housing in every large town show us that the poorest
classes of the population, the workers, small traders, petty employees,
etc., live worst of all, have the most crowded and worst dwellings and pay
most dearly of all for each cubic foot. Calculated per unit of
space the dwellings of factory barracks or hovels for the poor are more
costly than the fashionable dwellings anywhere on the Nevsky.

The conclusion to be drawn from this as regards both Germany and all
the capitalist countries is as follows. If the data on the utilisation of a
few up-to-date implements and agricultural machines show us that their
employment increases as the size of the farm increases, this means that
small-scale production in agriculture is poorly equipped with all
necessary implements. This means that in small-scale production
squandering of labour on maintaining an immense quantity of poor
and out-of-date implements suitable only for farming on a minute scale is
combined with acute want, causing the peasant to overstrain
himself in order somehow to keep going on his plot of land with these
obsolete barbaric implements.

That is what the data, so simple and so well-known to all, on the use
of agricultural machinery tell us if we reflect on their socio-economic
significance.

Capitalism raises the level of agricultural technique and advances it,
but it cannot do so except by ruining, depressing and crushing the mass of
small producers.

In order to give a graphic illustration of the social significance and
tempo of this process, we shall conclude by comparing the data of the three
German censuses of 1882, 1895 and 1907. For the purpose of this comparison
we must take the data on the number of instances of the use of the
five agricultural machines which were registered during the whole of this
period (these machines are: steam ploughs, seed-drills, mowing machines and
harvesters, steam and other threshing-machines). We obtain the following
picture:

Groups of farms

Number of Instances of the use of the chief
agricultural machines per hundred farms

1882

1895

1907

I

Less than 2 ha. . . . . .

0.5

1.6

3.8

II

{ 2-5 ” . . . . .

3.9

11.9

31.2

{ 5-10 ” . . . . .

13.5

32.9

71.1

{ 10-20 ” . . . . .

31.2

60.8

122.1

III.

{ 2O-100 ” . . . . .

59.2

92.0

179.1

{ 100 ha or more. . . .

187.1

208.9

271.9

Average .....

16.6

33.9

8.7

The progress seems considerable: during a quarter of a century the
number of instances of the use of the chief machines has grown in general
nearly fourfold. But, on making a careful examination, it has to be said
that it has required a whole quarter of a century to make the use of at
least one of the five chief machines a regular phenomenon in a small
minority of the farms that cannot do without the constant employment of
wage-labour. For such use can only be called regular when the number of
instances of it exceeds the number of farms, and we find that this occurs
only in relation to the capitalist and big peasant farms. Together they
comprise 12 per cent of the total number of farms.

The bulk of the small and middle peasants, after a quarter of a century
of capitalist progress, have remained, in a position in which only a third
of the former and two-thirds of the latter can use any of these five
machines during the year.